Over at the left side of the internet dial, Driftglass proves once again why he has to wear very roomy shorts:

Slightly beneath the skin it's about the single most consistently defining characteristic of the Republican Party. Hypocrisy. Because this is also the story of the same people who bellow like you had booted their kitten through a box fan every time the Evil Government asks them to kick [in] to help out children or poor people, or brown people or old people.

There’s been one persistent quality to Republican politics over the last 120 years: we do things to enrich already wealthy white men, because we understand wealthy men have political power, which enables them to steal more money. And wealthy white men are served best by poor ignorant peasants.

When we ask for tax increases to help the weak or the sick or helpless or just plain unlucky – basically anyone who isn’t them -- these Compassionate Christian Conservatives loudly bitch around the block and back again about the folly of “throwing money at the problem.”

Because, after all, how is having a poor black child who has a full stomach and a decent education going to make them any wealthier?

The GOP droogies are so entirely lobotomized that if Dubya announced tomorrow that the only thing that can keep us safe is stripping the remains of the dead of their jewelry and gold fillings, shipping the loot in bulk directly to Jack Abramoff, and then burning their bones in a torchlight parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, there’d be a run on lighter fluid and backhoes in every Red County in the land.

My Ur-grandparents on one side, and grandparents on the other, were immigrants. Most came from Ireland, where they were tired of starving, having next to nothing for the one meal a day they could afford. They scrubbed together enough savings and loans to come to the US through Ellis Island, settled briefly in the disgusting stews of lower Manhattan and then moved on to the less disgusting tenements of Jersey City, Newark, Kearney, and eventually, to jobs as “staff” in mansions in northern New Jersey and Westchester County in New York.

They all told stories about “Irish Not Wanted” signs. One grandmother told me she learned her curse words as a child, tormenting railroadmen in Jersey City, to get them to throw lumps of coal in anger, so she and her sisters could take the coal home to heat their shanty.

Their children went to grammar school and some graduated from high school. The next generation graduated from college. Because all those distant ancestors of mine knew education was the key to social and economic advancement.

Republicans don’t want this. The last thing they want is immigrants, regardless of color, being anything more than fieldhands. They know that when a man can eat enough to quiet the gnawing hunger in his belly he starts to think about how to put curtains on his shanty. Then, after the curtains, he starts to dream about having indoor plumbing, and carpeting to keep the shanty warmer in winter. The next thing you know, he’s some kind of wild-eyed radical, actually wanting to have the vote, and he’s going to want legislation to get his 13 year old son out of having to work 14 hours on Sunday in the coal mine.

The Republicans know that dumb, sleepy serfs are better off without education. And they’ve finally managed to find the perfect way to ensure the poor stay poor, the slightly better off once again return to the ranks of the poor, and the middle class in general get down checked, back to where their grandparents were 120 years ago. They’ve neutered the unions, offshoring all the decent well-paid industrial jobs that were the pathway for social and economic mobility through the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The vast industrial engine of production that was created by the two World Wars has been just about relegated to the history books now, and the Robber Barons of the 1870s are back to strip the rest of the Middle Class down to their underwear.

And that’s all just fine with Mr Bush. He’s got his, and he wants to make sure he and his friends get yours, too.